La Maison Ani, Chef Izu Ani’s French-Mediterranean restaurant at Jumeirah Carlton Tower in Knightsbridge, has teamed up with London Art Exchange for a new collaboration bringing contemporary art into the dining room.
The project begins with two commissioned works by artist Gabrielle Malak, Love Letter and Eternal Été, each paired with dishes that respond to the ideas, places and memories within the work. La Maison Ani x London Art Exch…
Rather than treating the artworks as decoration, the collaboration looks at how art might be experienced differently through food, atmosphere and the social setting of a restaurant.
La Maison Ani makes a fitting starting point. Set within the Jumeirah Carlton Tower, the restaurant combines French-inspired cooking with Mediterranean influences, against a backdrop of watermelon-pink banquettes, rich wood, marble and an open kitchen. The result is part restaurant, part carefully constructed environment — somewhere food, design and occasion already overlap. La Maison Ani x London Art Exch…
At the centre of the collaboration are Malak’s Love Letter and Eternal Été.
Inspired by the artist’s travels through Florence, Love Letter is paired with peony and lemon meringue, bringing floral notes and citrus into dialogue with the work’s romantic, Italian references.
Eternal Été, meanwhile, is paired with a lobster and harissa-infused tagine with vegetables, alongside yellowtail sashimi with olive oil, vinegar and caviar. Here the connection shifts towards Morocco, using flavour as another route into the sense of travel and place within the work. La Maison Ani x London Art Exch…
For Malak, that movement between art, memory and taste is central to the idea:
“I love the idea of bringing art into new environments and allowing people to experience it in different ways. Seeing these works interpreted through food at La Maison Ani creates a wonderful dialogue between art, travel, memory and taste.”
The partnership is intended to extend beyond Knightsbridge, with further works by Malak planned for other restaurant settings and future collaborations involving different chefs and venues. Each iteration will invite a new culinary interpretation of the artist’s work. La Maison Ani x London Art Exch…
For London Art Exchange, the project is part of a broader interest in placing art outside conventional gallery spaces. For Malak, it opens another way of extending ideas around travel, place, memory and emotion into a more sensory setting.
With Love Letter and Eternal Été, that story begins at La Maison Ani — but the idea is designed to travel.
